My Thoughts and Convictions

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My new job has been difficult to say the least, but in the way I had looked and anticipated for. I’m back in an industry that I have not worked in for 12 years (oil and gas), along with that I have to adopt to new personalities from our clients. I’m spending weekends trying to catch up, and I’m writing this blog to take a break. For the last few weeks, I’ve been constantly on my toes at work, juggling multiple projects and worried that I will drop the ball on one. But I would say that the biggest fear is not having a good grasp on this industry. My line of work as a Business Analyst is nothing new to me, but my strength in this line of work is proportional to my understanding of how this industry operates.

I’ve spent my weekends reading books, training guides, and catching up on specific work deliverables. It’s been a eye opener since I left my last job of 6 years and 4 months. I took a risk and left a job where I was a clear subject matter expert. Why I left is not the main purpose of this post, but just know that if you were in my shoes, you’d do the same.

I am also coming into this new job as an experienced analyst, whereas last time I started as an entry level recent college graduate. There are expectations that I will learn things faster and do things better than I did 6 years ago. The pressure is mounting up and I’m doing my best to meet the challenges. I do miss the times when I could analyze and think of solutions with a short time span. And during that time span, I never felt stressed because I knew a solution would come sooner or later. However, it took years to get to that point. My first 2 years were probably some of the toughest I had to deal with.

Despite starting a new company with green hands, I do have the advantage of drawing extensive experience from the past. In the past few days it’s become more clearer than ever that our career performance depends mainly on our state of mind, and not on our skill sets. But don’t get me wrong, our skill set plays a huge role in our state of mind, but knowing how to do something is not the same as having confidence in doing something. Confidence comes from within us, and it isn’t something we can just learn from a text book – we have to embrace life’s challenges to find confidence in our selves. From a day to day perspective, my definition of confidence is our mental capacity to handle the unexpected challenges and events that happen outside the bounds of our control on a daily basis. This alone does control a significant part of the quality of life we live on a daily basis. It’s not about solving a problem per say, but more so of how to deal with something when it happens, and not let it get the best of us, no matter how difficult it may appear to be. We need to be confident in our selves to think things through and make best of a situation based on the information we know and the factors that we have control over.

I sincerely believe this applies to everything we do and we can live a much more appreciative life if we constantly work towards this.